1 40 th CONGRESS OF THE EUROPEAN REGIONAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION PUBLIC PRODUCTIVE INFRASTRUCTURE AND ECONOMIC GROWTH MARIA JESUS DELGADO * and INMACULADA ALVAREZ ♣ * Universidad Europea de Madrid ♣ Universidad Complutense de Madrid MARIA JESUS DELGADO and INMACULADA ALVAREZ (2000) Evidence from the Spanish Regions to the Link between Productive Infrastructure and Economic Growth. This paper considers the measurement of infrastructure capital in the Spanish economy and investigates the technical relation among the inputs, which offers information about the way infrastructure enters in the production process. Using a translog production function we present panel estimates for the 17 Spanish regions for the period 1980-1995. The results indicate that productive infrastructure encourages private investment and can therefore be considered to be essential for economic growth. Keywords: Translogarithmic Production Function, Inputs Technical Relations, Regional growth, Productive Infrastructure INTRODUCTION Recent studies about the sources of growth have focused their interest on the study of inputs that are external to the firms. Among others: the public capital stock (Aschauer, 1989a,b, Munnell, 1990 and García Milá and McGuire,1992) and the human capital (Mankiw, Romer and Weil, 1992) have being analysed, following the principle that an increase of these inputs will improve levels of production. Besides this direct effect, these inputs may increase aggregate production through external economies. The neo-classical models of economic growth emphasize the former effect, while recent theories of endogenous growth focused on the second. The aim of this paper is to offer evidence from the Spanish regions about the complex relation between infrastructure capital and economic growth. Transport, communication and energy infrastructures have been considered as important elements